Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WISC and KBIT discrepancy? 23 points!

Argh. Still no results from the school, either sent home with ds or in the mail. I really wanted to take the results to my own school psychologist tomorrow to review them with her before our meeting with ds school on Monday morning, but now it looks like that won't happen. Would you ask to postpone the meeting until you've had a chance to fully review the data, or ask them to fax the report immediately, or just go in to the meeting without having the report ahead of time and wing it?

Thanks again for the advice!

Call and see if they can email them to you!

Here's what I have - sorry if this got double-posted: DS is 6 - will be 7 in April.
KBIT 142

WISC-IV:
index composite percentile
verbal comp 114 82
perceptual reas.. 135 99
working memory 99 47
processing speed 100 50
FSIQ 119

subtest scores -
VC
similarities 14
vocab 13
comp 11

PR
Block 16
Pictures 14
Matrix reasoning 17

WM
Dgit span 9
L/N Sequencing 11

PS
Coding 7
Symbol 13

They did not do any standardized achievement testing. Also it is noted that he was easily distracted and needed to be refocused a lot. Didn't want to make guesses for the difficult questions because he was afraid it might be wrong or was "too tricky."

I am in PA. Anyone have any advice?

Thanks in advance!!

The WISC was lower for my son when he took it four years later. The educational psychologist that tested my son the month he turned seven used the KBIT and achievement testing. Based on that testing he predicted my son would score in the highly gifted range if he took the WISC. His half-brother was similar to my son in a lot of ways and is highly gifted so we were expecting that my son would also be highly gifted.

The educational psychologist said that my son would need to be tested over more than one session because of his disability that affected his endurance, especially his vision. He also said he thought my son could have scored even higher on the achievement testing, both math and reading, if he didn't have the fatigue problem.

We couldn't afford testing until insurance paid for it when my son was 11. We were told it had to be done all in one session even though he had fatigue issues. It was done by a university and part of it was done by a student. My son had anxiety and could not sleep the night before the test. He was getting a migraine and the Tylenol he took did nothing for it. The testing was all day, with achievement testing at the end when he felt horrible but he kept going and wanted to get it over with. He said it made him really nervous because they watched everything he did and wrote down everything he said.

The neuropsychologist looked at that one test and determined that, although he was verbally gifted, he also had developmental coordination disorder and some other issues that I didn't think he had because I had never seen any evidence of it and these affected his IQ score. I told her that some of the test results, especially the tests after his headache got worse just didn't make sense and did not match what we knew about him from past testing and things he was able to do that required good coordination and motor planning. He only seemed uncoordinated when he was exhausted. He had to take breaks more often than other kids because of endurance issues that were caused by what we later learned was a connective tissue disorder. She said she didn't think the headache and anxiety and lack of sleep would have made that much difference and seemed angry that I, just a parent, would question her. She teaches at the university and I have thought writing her to tell her how important it is to listen to parents and to look at more than just one test and that she needs to do more research if she thinks that anxiety, fatigue and migraines can't affect test results. Misdiagnosis made it harder to get a correct diagnosis and I want her to know how much trouble and pain and heartache that caused us. We might have made different medical decisions if we had been able to get a correct diagnosis.

I don't think I was pushy enough and now I regret it.

Not sure where you are in PA, but even though PA law may say that the school needs to consider more than the IQ testing, many districts around here (SE PA) do not. It seems to happen in districts where there are a lot of gifted kids (many more than the 2% or so that a FSIQ 130+ would yield on a national basis).

If your child is labeled gifted, what are the benefits in your district? Here there are really not many benefits. In elementary, there is some sort of program for an hour or so every week or two. Not sure of the details since my kids were not IDed until 7th grade. The reason we had them labeled was so they would gain automatic entry to a special course in HS.

If there is no pressing reason to be labeled, I would wait a year or two and have him retest. I think it would be valuable to explain to him that it is okay and to his advantage to guess on the WISC. I am quite certain that the guessing worked to the advantage of DD17 and to the disadvantage of DD15 on the WISC. DD17 will guess even if she has only an inkling as to the answer, though DD15 wants to be sure she is right. DD15 did not qualify by the WISC (just missed w/128, took the WISC at age 10). When the district started using SB-V, she retested (at age 13) and qualified. Our district insists upon choosing the IQ test and administering the test - no outside testing allowed - and no use of GAI.

Thinking back, I believe that we disagreed with the original recommendation after the WISC for DD15 - since FSIQ<130, the school said she was fine in the regular classroom. So either don't sign or state that you disagree (but that didn't change anything for our kid).

I guess I'm surprised that you were informed of the KBIT score. After we received the WISC/SB-V reports for our kids, there were scores from other tests the school administered but we never knew about. DD15 had a SIT-R3 score of 143 in 2nd grade but we still have no idea why they gave her that test or what it means since they never provided the information to us.

Thanks so much everyone. We are first going to listen to what the school has to say. Then, I will definitely ask about the GAI and ask about the standardized achievement testing. I'm also thinking of asking for a behavior work up to see if there might be an ADD issue as well. He apparently had trouble attending even one-on-one during the testing and that could be holding him back.

When the psychologist intern called and talked to me in the phone she said the cutoff they were looking for was 129, which he should have if they use GAI.

Overall though I think what I want to get across to the school is that although I'm pleased with all his 100s and good grades, I want him to learn that it's ok to make mistakes and to learn from mistakes, and how to tackle challenges and not just give up. From the tester's remarks it seems like that is already becoming an issue and I'd like to nip that in the bud before it's too late. But if he's never really pushed that will always be a problem.

Wish us luck please!!

Ok. Had the meeting.

They had calculated the GAI but since it was 129 and not the magic 130 they didn't see it as relevant or worth mentioning. Didn't seem to think a 49% difference between PRI and PSI was an issue either - the test publisher might suggest otherwise, but their district regulations are strict with the 130. Are not willing to do standardized achievement testing to help figure out true achievement level because he didn't get the 130 on the WISC. They said their achievement "testing" was looking at his work in the classroom and his DRA level which is calculated once per marking period. He's "not quite" a grade level above there - was measured at 20 at the end of 2nd marking period, so they don't think that's relevant either. Also the fact that his independent reading level for enjoyment is well past that wasn't relevant either.

The classroom teacher said she has no doubt the ability and knowledge is there, but his writing is not the best and he only gives minimal answers - exactly what is needed and nothing more. Principal said gifted children will be going above and beyond on the writing prompts and adding in lots of details and creativity, so he must not be gifted. ((boiling)) They did agree to go to the gifted teacher and try to find some enrichment activities that he can do in math once he's done with his work. For fun we introduced multiplication at the dinner table last night and he understands the concept and can multiply by 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10. So I know the ability is there, he's just not getting an opportunity to show it.

We are also doing a questionnaire (Connor?) to look for focus and attention issues. Teacher said he focuses and could sit and read all day long, but when asked to do writing tasks or something he doesn't want to do he needs constant refocusing before he finishes. Principal is eager to look at an attention problem, but when I asked if that could have contributed to lower scores on the WISC it was poo-pooed.

I found out the psychologist intern had done the testing, and the psychologist was not in the room when it happened. When I asked the intern how many she had done before, she replied, "Gifted, well, uh,we don't usually screen for gifted so young" and the psychologist chimed in with "it's the same assessment either way, so she's done at least 50." So the fact that my son had been sick all week before the testing and that the assessor might be seen as inexperienced in looking for gifted traits in the testing have me quesitoning even the validity of the results.

They did say they would be pushing him to write more and include more in his writing, so that should be the challenge he needs and accommodation we're looking for, if we're worried he's not being challenged enough. When I asked if there could be some sort of physical difficulty in writing since his handwriting is below average for his age group they said that was probably just due to the attention problem and they'd be pushing him to write more and do more editing with his writing so it looks better.

End result - we did not sign anything. Waiting to see how this Connor thing turns out and how things go with these new accommodations then we'll go from there.. I'm not all that thrilled with how things went overall.

Sorry for the long post...

Both of my children scored 95th percentile on the kbit.
For ds, Wisc was not very conclusive re: 'iq' however very interesting and informative otherwise: high scores in some areas (spatial, verbal) - processing speed very very low.
Cogat 'math' was very very low, probs due to above processing speed issue.

My dd was also assessed using the wisc-like test for younger kids (forget the acronym right now) - 99th percentile.

Kbit was administered by the same teacher for both kids.

interesting for wisc:
http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/About_GDC/relevant.htm

First, I believe your DS' school personnel have made the classic mistake of confusing "above average high achiever" with "gifted".

I just had to say that...

IMO it sounds like you "might" be looking at some type of learning challenge because of the gaps, what you've said about the writing and homework (though like ZenS said he might need to be engaged). It could be that your DS' strengths are carrying his challenges along just fine. The comments about not getting an IEP are very true.

I think only time would tell. He is still young. I'd just keep an eye on him, see if his writing progresses, try to research other techniques to help him with this than the schools use.

I'd also make sure you help him discover and develop any strengths he has outside of school (I'm always going on about that!) There is alot of difference getting into 3rd grade and then 4th + when it comes to writing expectations so you have time if indeed there are challenges there.

A M tuba, I don't have time for a full response at the moment, but with the discrepancy your ds has in his scores I would suggest that rather than worrying about the school and the gifted program at the moment, it would be a good idea to seek a private neuropsych eval to help you better understand what's driving the disrepancies. It *might* be ADHD, but it could also be other things. I'll try to stop back in later this afternoon as I have some other comments re what happened with our ds who has a similar discrepancy and was having difficulty with written expression at the same grade/age. For our ds, it *wasn't* ADHD, but it did look like ADHD.

Best wishes,

polarbear